From Emporwerment to Invention: Creativity and Learning

Abstract

A solitary traveler must stay in an ancient inn for six nights. The stay costs a golden ring a day and the traveler has got a block of a chain made of six golden rings. The bill has to be paid daily – a ring the first day, two rings the second day and so on –, but the traveler can only open one of the six rings the block of a chain is made of: which one of the six rings is to open? A simple reasoning should solve the brain teaser but, as usual, some minutes pass before the resolution because it implies a new mental logical connection, a sort of invention, that can catch everyone unprepared.
Starting from the model of utile and nouveau, the categories of thinking the French mathe-matician and epistemologist Henri Poincaré defined invention, the present essay explores, from the history of psychology point of view, some of the potentialities that creativity and innovation can have on the lifelong learning.